Hottest Temperature
Jul 29, 1917
The state records its highest temperature of 114 degrees Fahrenheit. The record-holder is the town of Beardsley, winning on July 29. (Moorhead will tie this record on July 16, 1936.)*

Master, we remember You today for this record heat on July 29, 1917. We acknowledge, honor, and trust Your Providence over the weather conditions of Minnesota. We thank You for using: our atmospheric conditions, stars, moons, planets, and the natural world as a sign to us. May we look to You, and perceive both your blessing and rebuke, encouragement and exhortation through our environment now and always!

As Your children, we pray these confessions and assurances of Psalm 121 over Minnesota’s past, present, and future.***

“I lift up my eyes to the hills-where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip-he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord watches over you-the Lord is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all harm-he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.” Psalm 121:1-8 NIV
Amen.

Jul 1, 1917
Close to 120,000 soldiers and 1,000 nurses leave Minnesota to serve in World War I;
3,480 will not return.*

We may wonder what prompted so many of the North Star state’s sons and daughters sign up for this war in Europe. It was so far away: geographically, emotionally, and politically. Yet, approximately 5 out of every 100 of our forbearers went to defend Minnesota and the United States.

What did our countrymen think of the prospect of joining the Great War? “Public sentiment leaned towards the British and French (Allied) forces but the country remained neutral towards the conflict in Europe. The Democrats’ re-election campaign slogan “He Kept Us Out of War” painted (President) Wilson as a peacemaker.”**

However, Wilson broke that pledge of peace when Germany sunk the Lusitania off the coast of Ireland. Granted, Germany had issued the following warning in 40 U.S. newspapers, “Travelers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany . . . and Great Britain . . . and that travelers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.” One hundred years after the fact this sounds like a fair warning; to remain neutral, stay out of a war zone.

Further, some party sympathetic to the Allies had tainted the innocence of the Lusitania as a mere luxury liner, by loading her with weapons. “In the context of a wartime crossing, the cargo of the Lusitania on her last voyage included war materiel for the Allied war effort, including 52 tons of shrapnel shells, more than 3,000 percussion fuses, and 4,200 cases of Remington rifle cartridges.” Kapitanleutnant Walter Schwieger of submarine U-20 sank the Lusitania; a luxury liner also carrying war materiel. Of the 1,959 people on board, 1,195 died, including more than 120 Americans on May 7, 1915.**** Perhaps those that decided to gamble 1,200 lives to smuggle weapons past Germany’s blockade bear some blame for this tragedy?

So the question remains, did we enter the Great War based on a single act of aggression based on a false premise, or were there other events that pushed public opinion in joining the war? Below is one potential answer cited by the National Archives on the infamous Zimmerman Telegram.
“In January of 1917, British cryptographers deciphered a telegram from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the German Minister to Mexico, von Eckhardt, offering United States territory to Mexico in return for joining the German cause. This message helped draw the United States into the war and thus changed the course of history. The telegram had such an impact on American opinion that, according to David Kahn, author of The Codebreakers, “No other single cryptanalysis has had such enormous consequences.” It is his opinion that “never before or since has so much turned upon the solution of a secret message.” In an effort to protect their intelligence from detection and to capitalize on growing anti-German sentiment in the United States, the British waited until February 24 to present the telegram to Woodrow Wilson. The American press published news of the telegram on March 1. On April 6, 1917, the United States Congress formally declared war on Germany and its allies.”***

Our Father, hear our prayer! We have offended Your justice in at least three ways in the commencement of World War I: we have lost our commitment to peace, we have tried to create righteous outcomes through deception, and we have eaten the bait of offense offered by the Enemy of all humankind. We have broken with the eternal principles of Your Kingdom, and chosen to exalt our own kingdoms. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of David, have mercy on our State; a sinning people.

Eternal Judge, will You forgive us for following President Wilson into World War I? Will You forgive us for the abandonment of the Monroe Doctrine and the warnings of the Founding Fathers:
Monroe Doctrine Introduction
“The occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.”

Monroe Doctrine addressed to the “allied powers” of Europe (Holy Alliance)
“We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power, we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine

We have followed our President and Congress into this Great War, and have broken faith with You; the Prince of Peace. Will You bless those who voluntarily served in the military with a clear conscience? Will You remove the curse received from those within our State, Federal Government, or unelected positions of influence that may have steered us into war because they lacked conscience?

Will You forgive us our judgments of the nation of Germany in the sinking of the Lusitania? Their nation provided clear boundaries of the risks of traveling within their war zone to our citizens, a warning heeded by some, and ignored by others. We amplify our offense to Germany by attempted smuggling of materiel on a civilian ship while maintaining a posture of neutrality. Will You forgive us our duplicity as a people? Will You forgive, specifically, those who may have intentionally deceived the passengers of the Lusitania?

Will You forgive the State of Minnesota, and the peoples of the United States, of our willingness to take the bait of offense through the means of media and war propaganda? We believed the reporting that innocent lives were taken, and they were, but under a false premise. Will You forgive us this offense and duplicity towards Your Sincerity? Will You forgive those of us who sincerely believed a lie?

Will You free us from the guilt of those who schemed to frame this event of abandoning our neutrality in favor of war? Will You judge both those who wrote the Zimerman Telegraph and interpreted it? Whether it was true or false, the outcome was that we chose war over maintaining relationship. Will You forgive Germany where it broke faith with the US? Will You forgive the United States where it broke faith with Germany? Will You forgive us all our ignorance and arrogance? We have believed the worst of enemy, the best of ourselves, and have not continued to believe in the G-d and Father of All Nations!

I want to be clear that I do not condemn those Minnesotans who served in this war, or paid the supreme sacrifice. I believe that they acted in good faith on the information they had. Lord, will You bless those who paid for our freedom with their lives and pain to their bodies, minds, and spirits? Will You bless their generations to be ready for war as a last resort of exhausting every avenue to peace? Amen.

1916-1918
Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., father of the famed aviator, argues that America should stay out of a war from which only the arms merchants will profit. The isolationist Lindbergh is jailed, shot at, and hanged in effigy during his losing campaign for governor.*

Lord, You have said, “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. I Timothy 6:10*** Will You help us search our heart motives in this era, and give us sound judgment? Will You let us ponder, without fear, the heartfelt warnings of Minnesota Congressman Charles Lindbergh Sr. today as to our participation in the Great War?

“Below is Lindbergh’s powerful Congressional speech from his 1917 book ‘Why is Your Country at War’?, page 156, that alleges the Money Trust created the privately-owned Federal Reserve banking system to maximize their own profits. This speech is as strong and accurate a message that can be communicated. It is fully worth your investment of under 5 minutes’ attention.
“…I shall now quote the main important parts of my speech of July 5, 1916—in the Congressional Record of that date:
“No matter what individual professions and party claims may be to the contrary, it is apparent to anyone who has been a Member of Congress, and to anyone else who examines, that the will of the people in regard to legislation is seldom consulted. The price of leadership here is exactly the opposite of carrying out, in good faith, the will of those we are elected to serve.
Wholesale deception of the voters has been, and is now, the means used most successfully to secure office and remain in public life.
…Every one here knows that these things are true. But the public gets no information from the press about it, but anyone who dares to uncover the system and expose the schemes for deceiving the public finds that a certain part of the press will attack him and call him a radical and obstructionist, and excoriate him in every way possible. If to tell the truth about things makes one a radical, then radicals ought to be at a premium. But they have not been so far politically.
…There is a sinister influence at work in our country, which, if it is not checked, intends to completely undermine the original purpose of the formation of our Government—change it from the purposes of a democracy, and instead make it of a monarchical and plutocratic system, and to bring all the world into one control and one system, which for purposes of deception of the plain people, they would call a “world’s democracy,” but which in fact it is their plan to make the rule of the wealth grabbers, maintained by simple organization of themselves and disorganization of the masses pitting the masses against each other. It would be the privilege of a few to rule in splendor, and the fate of the many to spend their lives in unrequited toil and that hopeless condition of servitude which millions came here to escape from. The few now desire to cut off every possible avenue of escape from industrial slavery for the masses.
…The plain truth is that neither of these great parties, as at present led and manipulated by an ‘invisible government’ is fit to manage the destinies of a great people. Their rules of regulation must be changed before they will be, and it is doubtful if their rules will be materially changed. If they shall be, it will be because the voters themselves force it.
…Early in my service here I observed that there was some power outside the Government itself which was insidiously, but none the less effectively dictating the course of legislation in reference to finance, currency and the creation and control of credit throughout the country; that it was in a position to dictate and did dictate to an extent almost unlimited, to whom credit should be extended and from whom it should be withheld, and that it largely controlled the political action and influence of most of the banking and other corporations of the country. I saw that such a power of control existed here in Congress.
I introduced a resolution setting forth the facts, naming this insidious and well nigh invincible power, the Money Trust, source of all the trusts and calling for an investigation of its activities. The “big business” press, ridiculed the resolution and especially the idea that the Money Trust had an existence. (The facts about this appears elsewhere in this volume. See Index: Money Trust.) In this case the Committee reported out my resolution under a different name, and in order to prevent me from serving on the committee to be appointed, the resolution was referred to the Banking and Currency Committee which was composed almost entirely of bankers and lawyers for some of the banks. By keeping me off the committee I could not cross examine the witnesses.
The committee, nevertheless, had to report that there was a Money Trust and that its activities were as I had stated, and that its existence and the power it yielded were a menace to the institutions of the country, but took no action to deprive it of its power.
Woodrow Wilson, however, took notice of the proceedings and of the existence of the Money Trust.
This was before he became president. He promised to exercise his influence if elected, to curb its power and influence. But I have no hesitation in saying that this promise has not been kept, but on the contrary the principal result of financial legislation during this administration has been to legalize and more firmly entrench the Money Trust in its control of business, credit and politics of this vast country than ever before, and in order to conceal that fact the Money Trust has bought the services of many prominent financial writers for the purpose of running articles in the press praising the Federal Reserve system which in less than six years the people will rise in rebellion against because of its intolerable and unjust burden (Editor’s note: Lindbergh was off by seven years. It took 13 years from this speech for the Money Trust to simultaneously call-in loans in October 1929, crash the Stock Market, and begin the Great Depression).
Profiting from my observation of the Money Trust inquiry by a committee nearly all the members of which were interested in limiting its activities as much as possible, I introduced a resolution declaring it should be the policy of the House Membership that no banker or any one who was financially interested in a bank should be a member of the banking and currency committee.
I also introduced a resolution calling on Members to declare the extent of their affiliations with banks, if they had any.
Neither of these resolutions came out of the Committee on Rules to which they were referred, so we must take it for granted that a majority of the Rules Committee believe that it is right for bankers to frame legislation for Congress to pass for the bankers personal benefit, as all financial legislation shows has been done. Personally I do not believe that a banker should be on that Committee, any more than that if some one sued a judge that he, the sued judge, should sit as the presiding judge to decide his own lawsuit.
My Democratic friends, you have the vain hope that special privilege, having obtained enormous benefits at your hands, is going to be grateful for the past favors that you have showered upon it and assist you in retaining control of the Government. They will furnish you campaign funds, as they do to both the dominant parties, but it makes little difference to them which of you have the power as long as it remains with either under present conditions. You are to learn, having done all you could for it, that you are no longer necessary to its business, except that now that you have passed the most important laws that it wanted, you are forced to follow it up, and are stopped from complaining through your portion of the press and on the stump or from entering any protest whatever when the time comes that your eyes will be open to the oppression the plain people are surely destined to suffer because of your falsely so-called ‘beneficial legislation.’
You have missed the opportunity of your lifetime; one not likely to ever come to you again. The time will come when no Democrat who boasts of the achievements of this administration will be considered worthy to hold any public office. You have gone “cross-roads” with some of the most vital principles laid down by the great Thomas Jefferson. You may boast of him as a great Democrat, but none of you who have been active in fastening some of the hardships of this administration upon the people can boast of yourselves.” “

Eternal Father, as surely as You live forever, there is not a single monolithic motive for why any peoples of any era or time commit themselves to go to war. We yield and bend to its call as the voices of our leaders are translated by our inward being. Most of us obey a call to arms, but we fight for different reasons. Do we fight because someone has touched our security? Do we fight because of a real or imagined great moral cause? Do we fight for our material, land, or economic assets and interests? Do we fight because we treasure loyalty?

In any case, we take note of Lindbergh’s assertions that we were being led to the Great War primarily for the benefit of those selling loans, war materiel, and a political class that benefitted from globalization. We observe that both Democrats and Republicans were pitted against each other by the Money Trust to create laws beneficial to their purposes. In general, Lindbergh warns of the power of leadership within leadership; of an “invisible government” that has the potential to usurp representative democracy.

In response to this speech, let us remember the eternal call of Your word. You have given us the right and responsibility to defend ourselves, yet not commit murder. “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.” Genesis 9:6 NIV***
An attack on an individual is an attack on the image of G-d, therefore, not to be taken rashly! Further directions are clearly stated in Your Ten Commandments; “You shall not murder.” Exodus 20:13 NIV***

How then, do these individual principles translate into terms of tribes, city-states, or nation states regarding war? In his post “Every Battle in the Bible”, author Mike Southon cites approximately 90 battles in the Old Testament, as well as listing enemies of the Patriarchs and Israel, outcome, and acts of Divine Intervention. While very comprehensive, even a brief perusal makes clear that G-d ordained or directed wars were also limited by His precepts of justice and mercy. The victories listed were within the framework of His plan and purpose. Those remembered as defeats were initiated and conducted without His consultation. In reflection, Southon posits “I argue that the Old Testament history shows that war was part of God’s gift of the land to Israel.”****

So we begin to intercede, under Your authority, for this moment of time! We remember first that price is paid for all human separation through the risen Messiah; Jesus Christ! Through Him, all sin, throughout all time, can be lifted up, out, and onto the Cross of Christ.

We give thanks for the life of Congressman Charles Lindbergh Senior, and his wariness of our entrance to the Great War. Will You forgive all the judgments made against him whether by constituent, his elected peers, or the unelected “Money Trust”? Will You lift this weight from him, his ancestry, and his figurative children who question our State and Nation where it has rushed to war?

Will You forgive Lindbergh his judgments of his constituents’ dissent to his positions? Will You forgive the Congressman for the judgments of his peers, their words, their parties, and motives? Will You forgive his false assessments of his enemies within the “Money Trust”: manufacturers, Wall Street, and the Federal Reserve?

This Great War, as all our warfare, gives testimony to the failure of our relationships: nation to nation, city to city, tribe to tribe, family to family, and individually as human to human! We have offended Your image in the Great War through the destruction of our enemies. We have amplified our offenses in this war where we failed to consult You. We have failed the spirit of self-defense with acts motivated by the spirit of conquest. We have failed our countrymen, their property and lands, where Your laws of grace and truth, justice and mercy, good and evil were broken in World War I.

Will You have mercy on both our intentional, and unintentional blindness Father? At times, we are no better than Adam and Eve, who were enticed by the promise of being “like G-d” by the Serpent. Where we were enticed into WWI by the Money Trust, will you forgive us those specific acts of conquest? Will You forgive us for following those seeking G-d like power in a post-war Europe? Will you change our will-to-power?

It is possible that we are no different than Cain and Abel; an unrighteous brother murdering his innocent brother. While defensive warfare is not murder, there are real atrocities, abominations, and warcrimes. Your sons have killed Your sons! It’s unthinkable to imagine the pain that Cain caused his parents. Yet, when we scale it up to the size of the Great War, we cannot fathom the pain caused to our Eternal Father!

Will You bless us to retain Your goodness when we oppose and defeat evil in our time, and into the future? Will You make us exhaustive in our diplomacy towards peace, yet resolute in commitment to not appease evil? Will You expose the real Enemy of mankind within war propaganda and the unearned wealth of conquest? As your children, We ask You to uproot the Money Trust: in this era, at present, and until You come! We know that You are All-Knowing and Faithful and True to bring justice to those who specifically and intentionally have sown the seeds of the Great War, while blessing those whose talents were used in good faith. We declare over Minnesota; “In G-d we trust!”

1917
Workers at the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company sawmill, the largest in the world, strike for higher pay and safer working conditions. Organizers from the radical International Workers of the World spread the strike to the logging camps before police break it up with arrests and force.*

Minnesota’s history of logging in this era is rife with irony. On one hand, it is a shining example of cooperation and productivity.
“The VRL Lumber Co. was the largest on earth producing on average a million board feet of lumber a day seven days a week. Production on such a vast scale required an enormous supply of virgin white and red pine harvesting a total of four billion board feet over a 20 year period.**

On the other hand it was pitifully negligent in its care for its workers’ health and well-being.
“Toilet facilities were primitive in the extreme. Privies were no more than shallow, open pits with a roof and some poles for seats. Excrement was only rarely treated with lime or even covered with dirt. State inspectors repeatedly and despairingly observed that “there seems to prevail an idea that toilet facilities in a camp are superfluous.””
Safety precautions were ignored, too. Engaged in strenuous manual labor with lethal tools in frigid weather, lumberjacks had an extremely high accident rate. Although immediate first aid was therefore the jacks’ greatest medical need, a survey of logging
camps several years before the strike revealed that “in none . . . were there any facilities for giving first aid to the injured.”**

Below is the an eye-witness testimony regarding the ‘jacks accommodations.
“Prospects of a major IWW walkout were enhanced, however, by the working and living conditions of the lumberjacks. Typically, jacks lived in rough-cut lumber shanties. A bunkhouse 30 feet by 80 feet by 11 feet would house anywhere from 60 to 90 men in rows of double-decked wooden bunks lining each wall. Each individual bed with its mattress of loose straw slept two men. Each jack received two or three woolen blankets from the camp (sheets were unknown). The turnover was so high that four or five men might easily use the same blankets each season.

Virtually all the beds, blankets, and men were infested with lice. In 1914 inspectors from the State Department of Labor and Industries observed that “the conditions under which the men were housed made it impossible for men to keep their bodies free from vermin.”

Bunkhouses were ventilated only by doors at each cud and one or two small skylights in the roof. One or perhaps two iron stoves, kept fired all night, provided heat. The poor ventilation compounded sanitary problems.

The men worked 11-hour days in the cold northern Minnesota winter and generally wore two or three sets of underwear in addition to their outer garments. The combination of wet snow and hard labor soaked the jacks’ clothes every day, but the men were without washing facilities either for themselves or what they wore.

Since most of them put on all the clothing they owned, dozens of sets of wet-from-sweat clothes hung near the stove every night to dry for the next day. The steam from the clothing joined the stench of tightly-packed, unwashed bodies in the bunkhouse, prompting one Wobbly to comment that “the bunk houses in which the lumber jacks sleep are enough to gag a skunk.” Testimony of Jay Hall; Sixteenth Biennial Report, p. 117; Boose, in International Socialist Review, 14:414**

“Chronology
December 24, 1916
Timber mill workers at the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company draw up a list of demands.
December 26, 1916
Workers present their demands to the superintendent of manufacturing, Chester R. Rogers.
December 27, 1916
Mill workers decide to go ahead with the strike.
December 28, 1916
Pickets begin at the company’s gates. One thousand workers go on strike. Flying squads (IWW messengers) head north to lumber camps.
January 1, 1917
One thousand lumberjacks walk out of the camps.
January 2, 1917
A thousand more lumberjacks strike. Lumberjacks are banished from Virginia, Minnesota.
February 1, 1917
The lumber strike is officially called off.”***

So, what was the aftermath of this strike, and how did it improve the lives of lumberjacks and those that worked the sawmill? Below is an excerpt from Wobbly (IWW) records:

“The mill workers returned to their jobs in the last week of January. The lumberjacks held on a bit longer and neither the Virginia and Rainy Lake Company nor the International Lumber Company was able to reopen logging operations until February. What remained of the Wobbly lumber strike leadership gathered in Duluth. On February 1 the leaders called off the strike, claiming a partial victory by way of improved conditions.
Most companies did attend to their camps better after the strike. The ILC bought new blankets for the men and raised slightly the base pay. The quality of food seems to have been improved, too, in most camps. In 1917 the Virginia and Rainy Lake Company spent nearly 20 per cent more per man for food than earlier. Wartime price inflation accounted for part, but not most, of the increase.”****

What say You of this event and the broken relationships between loggers, their representatives in the IWW, and the V.R.L. company managers and International Lumber Company (ILC) owners? We invite Your timeless knowledge, and graceful judgment into their circumstance Ruach Ha Kodesh. How do we begin to make right this wrong from Your perspective? How have we offended You and the principles of Your kingdom?

You have said clearly through the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Corinthians:
“Do I say this from a human perspective? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Isn’t He actually speaking on our behalf? Indeed, this was written for us, because when the plowman plows and the thresher threshes, they should also expect to share in the harvest.” I Corinthians 9:8-10

We acknowledge, first, our offense to You through the judgments of Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company and the ILC. We offend You as employers when we do not provide a Sabbath rest. We offend You when do not provide for the lives and safety of Your workers. We offend You when we fail to provide food, clothing, and adequate shelter for those in our care. We offend You when profit becomes an idol that forgets the contributions of the employees to the health of the corporation. Will You forgive VRL Co. and the International Lumber Company in this era, and create right relationships that lead to blessing in our timber industry’s management both in the present and future?

Similarly, we have offended You through the judgments of the lumberjacks and sawmill workers towards the VRL Company’s owners and ILC managers. We offend You when we do not take a Sabbath where it is offered. We offend You when we expect our employer to solve our unmentioned problems, and fail to be proactive in our own needs. We offend You as workers through the misbelief that profit is a given, therefore, the company has unlimited resources to spend on labor. Will You forgive the lumberjacks and millworkers of VRL Co. and ILC of this era, and create new
interconnections between laborers, labor unions, and executives of our logging industry that lead to present and future blessings for all?

Above all, we especially ask for the release of the victims of the injustices of this era from the prisons of their counter-judgments. We know that there are those who lost life and limb. We know that there are those who were circumstantially hemmed in who felt they had no choice but to submit to abusive work conditions to survive.

Will You forgive those who were ensnared through the maintenance of offense towards the abuses of Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company and the ILC? Will You give them gifts of grace that look to You for justice, while not resubmitting themselves to abuse? Will You take these judgments and counter-judgments up, out, and onto the Cross of Christ? Will You remove the log from the eyes of all in the logging industry?

1917 to 1919
Labor shortages in the U.S. during World War I and political unrest in Mexico draw many Mexican workers north to the sugar-beet fields of the Red River and Minnesota River valleys. Many return year after year; others move to the Twin Cities to find permanent jobs.*

As a backstory, the sugar beet came to prominence in 18th century Silesia through experiments subsidized by Frederick William III (the King of Prussia) to extract sugar. These findings were furthered by scientists Andreas Marggraf and his star pupil Franz Karl Achard. Their work led to the selection of ‘Weiße Schlesische Zuckerrübe’, meaning white Silesian sugar beet, and boasted about a 6% sugar content.**

The Red River Valley of northwestern Minnesota and eastern North Dakota had perfect conditions for the growing of this specis of beta vulgaris. Mexican migrant workers entered the scene just as local sugar beet growers and the American Crystal Sugar Company had need for their hand-harvested crop. The Great War had commandeered local labor, leaving room for displaced Mexicans.

Jim Norris, a local expert on these relations, stated the following in his book “North for the Harvest”:
“Though popular convention holds that corporations and landowners invariably exploited migrant workers, (the author) reveals that these relationships were more complex. The company often clashed with growers, sometimes while advocating for workers. And many growers developed personal ties with their migrant workers, while workers themselves often found ways to leverage better pay and working conditions from the company.”

And so, Lord of the Harvest, we find ourselves in a triune relationship; the company, the farmers, and the field workers. We invite Your illumination of these events, and Your insights. Come and lead our meditation!

We thank You for beta vulgaris and the sweet taste it brings to our lives. We thank You for the research done for centuries that yielded such fine results, and provided an alternative to sugar brought into existence by the slavery of the sugar cane fields! We thank You that You provided opportunity for Mexicans amidst the tragedy of the Great War!

Next, we thank You for Your example of a three-sided relationship creating balance. Your roles incorporate our experience of simultaneously living out three roles, yet being one person. We are mothers, daughters, and wives simultaneously! We are fathers, sons, and husbands at the same instant!

Therefore, we can find security that companies, farmers, and fieldworkers can play three roles that serve one united purpose in sugar beets or the production of any commodity. Will You be the guardian of these relationships in Minnesota? Will You forgive our offenses to You in our imbalances in these relationships?

Will You forgive us as field workers for negating the needs of our farmers to produce results without fail? Will You forgive our farmers their dehumanization of laborers? Will You forgive those that own the company of their drive to power and market position? Will You forgive us as farmers and field workers our fearful judgments of Wall Street? We do not know the pain of finding a buyer or fair price for huge quantities of a perishable product. Have mercy on us!

May we find sweetness in being a three-legged stool! May we see the imbalance should we remove one leg of our relationships! May we be one in purpose regardless of position: migrant, farmer, or president!

*P.T.H. cites timeline formerly at this URL: mnhs.org/about/dipity_timeline.htm
The Minnesota Historical Society Web site, http://www.mnhs.org, is fantastic! Check it out! Images are from https://images.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl; again, an amazing resource!
**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_beet
***Dig deeper on the impact of migrant workers in Minnesota and the Midwest in this excellent book. “Mexican Workers, Growers, and the Sugar Beet Industry” by Jim Norrishttp://muse.jhu.edu/book/5421

1917
Anti-German hysteria runs rampant during the war. The Minnesota Commission of Public Safety is given sweeping powers to bully German Minnesotans, suppress the right of free speech, break strikes, and even remove elected officials from office.*

Our Constitution is designed to protect us from both tyranny of the majority or tyranny of the minority.
“In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.” – Speech, Constitutional Convention June 29th 1787 (https://thefederalistpapers.org/founders/james-madison-quotes)

To offer some more specific historical context, read the excerpt from Matt Reicher’s article on the MNopedia site.
“The U.S. entered World War I on April 6, 1917. Minnesota legislators worked quickly to pass war-related laws before the end of their spring session. As a result, the Sullivan bill saw very little debate. It passed both houses and was signed into law by Burnquist on April 16, 1917. The MCPS took control of many of the state’s regulatory, public safety, and military functions.

Throughout its tenure the MCPS provided useful services. It distributed food, controlled the prices of goods, and conserved fuel. However, it is best known for its use of secret surveillance, intimidation, and other extreme tactics in the name of protecting Minnesota’s citizens.

Ensuring clear-cut loyalty to America eventually overtook the MCPS’s other efforts. Commissioners regarded any lack of patriotism as rebellion. Political beliefs were irrelevant. Governor Burnquist maintained that there were only two parties during the war: “loyal” and “disloyal”. He and the MCPS praised the former and tried to eliminate the latter.” (ibid http://www.mnopedia.org/group/minnesota-commission-public-safety)

As defined by the American Psychological Association, ambiguity is “a perceptual object that may have more than one interpretation. (http://www.apa.org/research/action/glossary.aspx) One problem with loyalty litmus tests is that they often force emotional ambiguity upon society. Citizens face the dilemma of feigning outward compliance to the law, but inwardly rejecting its divisiveness and lack of subtlety.

Lord, hear our prayer! In the era of WWI, we allowed a consensus opinion to beat down the rights of German Americans solely on the basis of their race. In offending them, the largest and most populous group of Minnesotans, we have offended You. We have treated citizens as suspects: in social circles, in their work life, in their property, and in their faith. Have mercy!

Will You restore to German Americans the damages done to them in this chapter of history? Will You forgive our fears that overcame wise law during the Great War? Will You forgive us from literally erasing their names from the persons, places, and things of Minnesota? Will You forgive the MCPS and Minnesotans from “piling on” of shame over imagined offenses, instead of dealing solely with real guilt of actually breaking the law through collaborating with an enemy during wartime?

Contrarily, will You forgive the judgments of German Americans towards the MCPS and the State? Will You free them from the weight of maintaining the offense of their humilations? Will You remove this historic offense up, out, and onto the Cross of Christ? Only You can bear our sins, and change us into overcomers!

In our present and future, will You help us slow down our destructive reactionary responses to war and rumors of war through the gateway of our fears? Your Word says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear is by suspicion, but he who fears is not grown up in love. 1John 4:18 Aramaic Bible in Plain English*** Will You help us to trust our neighbors, and honor the rights, privileges, and duties of their citizenship as much as our own?

Will You protect us from societal damages through the means of group and identity politics? We cherish our race, or our subculture, but You have called us beyond our ethnicities as individuals! Our worth to You is not based one our “ism”, “hyphen”, our other marker; we are worthy because You have called us worthy!

Further, will You heal Your Church to be cognizant that our first citizenship is in Heaven? Will You free us from the Enemy’s triggers, and the bait of ethnic-based offense? We relinquish our rights to maintain an offense and declare the Jubilee of Your grace towards all people of Minnesota now and always. Maranatha!

1917
More than 17,000 Indians volunteer in the U.S. armed forces despite their exclusion from the draft of the nation’s citizens. Even before the U.S. entered the war, others had crossed the border to join Canada’s distinguished 107th Regiment.*

“When the United States entered World War I a draft was implemented. Indian men were required to register for the draft. However, Indians were not generally considered to be citizens at this time, and most Indian men were therefore not citizens. Citizenship for Indians at this time was not determined by place of birth, but by whether or not they had taken an allotment and were considered “competent.” “**

“The rate of death and injury among American Indian soldiers is extremely high because they are often assigned dangerous scouting assignments—missions that many of them view as opportunities to demonstrate their strength as warriors.”***

“He (G-d) chose the lowly and despised things of the world, and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast in His presence.” I Corinthians I:28-29 Berean Study Bible****

Thank You today for the commitment of these warriors to protect and serve! Whether they went to defend their tribes, First Nations, the State of Minnesota, or the United States of America is unclear. Perhaps the question “why” they served is immaterial given that many were not conferred with citizenship or an obligatory duty to fight.

Will You forgive our State of its denial of the citizenship of its’ first citizens? Will You forgive the blindness of our laws in this era, both in terms of rights denied and privileges withheld to these men? Will You help us past, present, and future deal justly in the gray areas of our laws? Will You forgive the judgments between citizens and non-citizens?

We humbly remember their service this day, Master! Will You protect and keep their memories, their tribes, and their First Nations? Will You be the keepers of their progeny; and bless forever all who protect voluntarily?

We give You thanks that You are not given to the pettiness of humankind! You overcome our pridefulness, again and again, through humble hearts! Will You make us one Minnesota that will serve You and our neighbors beyond the politically defined boundaries of nations, across the borders of States, outside the familiarity of our tribes?